Saturday, January 21, 2012

Fear of the Witch

Here's a unique, somber story of possession with an equally unique and interesting ending. What would you do in this situation with a busy blonde beaver by day - sexy satanic succubus by night? (Best answer wins something from the Karswell Kollection!) From the May / June 1954 issue of Haunted Thrills #15.

15 comments:

Trevor M
said...

Completely unexpected ending. Unique is the right word for this story. As for what I'd do with them, I'd get Beth started in a life of crime. As she's dead, cannot be found during the day -- and, in fact, the cops can exhume her grave and see for themselves and even match fingerprints! -- we could rack up millions. I'd also probably get a Viagra prescription.

"Completely unexpected ending. Unique is the right word for this story. As for what I'd do with them, I'd get Beth started in a life of crime. As she's dead, cannot be found during the day -- and, in fact, the cops can exhume her grave and see for themselves and even match fingerprints! -- we could rack up millions. I'd also probably get a Viagra prescription."

BTW, when I talked (earlier) about predictable endings, there's actually nothing wrong with that; these stories are always about the journey, the ending is just a way to get to the 5-8 page count :) Some of my favorite stories are predictable, but the journey is so fun it doesn't matter. It's just that Stan kept drawing attention to it! His stiche (and I love him for it) was always that kind of "contest" with the reader.

This is a fun story, but nowhere earlier was Beth evil initially, but then is suddenly she's an evil thing! And the husband throwing away all her pictures? Yikes!

I'd have to agree with Trevor -- it'd be hard no to take advantage of such an arrangement!

Gotta love those crummy Iger stories. This is wrong on so many levels. ;-)Pure madness condensed in five pages. A Freudian bonanza. Blonde at day, dark at night. "Busy little beaver, aren't you?" and "The strangest bigamist of all time". The rest is silence. And awe.

How is it Beth has supposedly become evil, again? Seems to me like she was just trying to make good on a promise. Her love knows no bounds--including possibly stealing the body of her postmortem rival. Her story is actually super bittersweet, frankly. Here she can only return to the man she loves by sharing him with another woman. That's pretty heady opera.

I agree with everyone that Trevor is the clear winner here. The only suggestions I have are a) become a magician and wow your friends with two transformation shows daily. Or b) study hard and become a husband-and-wife (and wife) astronaut duo. Then set up house on the moon's north pole, instead. Depending on how you position the bedroom on the rotating day/night line, you can actually turn your wife into both women at once in a kind of windmill pattern.

As for he story's actual conclusion, I loved it. It's highly romantic! I appreciate the man's desire to maximize his relationships by consolidating the days and nights of the year together.

Some fun and very clever comments here gents, I appreciate you playing along! I'm going to try and get some more real contests going again here like we used to do, and as we enter the Year of the Dragon, I'll see what kind of monstrous horror I can unleash upon you for the next post...

Thanks Den, yes Amazon has officially announced (and made available for pre-order) the next Chilling Archives of Horror collection from IDW and Craig Yoe's always awesome Yoe Books-- ZOMBIES (Coming May 22nd!) And like the Bob Powell Terror book, this one not only includes Karswell story contributions, but is also co-edited AND features an intro from yours truly. Click the link below for more info, I'll have more info about this in the next post.

as Always Love your Posts.... I hope to post more scans of my collection of horror comics stories ( Scans that I will make at the Library) Now that my computer is working (changed out from "Vista" to "Windows XP") Keep up the Great work... ....the Doctor

"...the capital of online comic book horrors... saying "Not the best story THOIA has run" is a bit like saying "one of Beethoven's lesser symphonies!"---Quasar Dragon

"...the object of all horror chicks' wet dreams... a comixkaze of awesome!"---Killer Kittens

"...an online repository of vintage comic fear fare where individual stories from long out-of-print issues are posted in high resolution, page by page. For a fan of EC, Atlas and other Silver Age-era comic companies, it is pure heaven (and hell)..."---Bryan Reesman (Attention Deficit Delirium)